So here goes, the launch of my personal website beadysea.com. If you follow @beadysea on twitter then you’ll have some idea why this blog site is called beadysea.com. You’ll also know my name is Bill Crawford, a Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Expert and if you’ve read some of my tweets you’ll have figured out I’m a lecturer of electrical and electronic engineering. So you wouldn’t be surprised that my blog will cover topics related to education, particularly further and higher education. Before we get into those conversations, I thought I’d share with you the story leading to my passion for learning and teaching.
Imagine you’re almost 25-years-old. You’ve just been made redundant. It’s a warm summer morning, breakfast radio is playing in the background. And you hear these words:
“Twenty-five years and my life is still,
trying to get up that great big hill of hope,
for a destination.” Perry (1993)
You tune in to the song playing on the radio.
That was me in 1993. A young electrical engineer just starting out, trying to make something of my life. Made redundant, thrown on the scrap heap. If you’ve experienced a few months of unemployment you’ll get my personal interpretation of this song. The great big hill – the struggle to find employment. The crying in bed – the grief, the sense of loss, of despair. The need to release your thoughts, your peculiar feelings of rejection, failure and loneliness. You’ll get the frustration, the emotional need to ‘scream out’ why, why me, what’s going on? And pray, OMG do you pray. Clinging to the hope of light at the end of a dark tunnel. You pray for the revolution, the turning point, the one letter of acceptance.
My revolution began after three months of unemployment. It started with a training course in quality management with a six-month secondment in a local company. Then one week in August 1994, just as my secondment was coming to an end, I spotted a part-time lecturer opportunity at a local college. They were looking for someone to teach electrical and electronic engineering and ideally quality management. Apart from having no teaching qualification or experience at the time, you couldn’t write a better description of my skill set. I applied and vividly remember the interview, if you could call it an interview. You just know you’re in the right place when your interview turns into a conversation, a chat between kindred spirits.
I remember my first day, as if it was yesterday. My new boss explained procedures, processes, the structure of an SQA unit, master folders and discussed the learning materials for the first unit I’d be teaching. Later the same morning I was introduced to the class as their new lecturer and left to teach them. A true baptism of fire! That first class is burned into my memory as a life changing experience. Sure it was far from perfect but I discovered I enjoyed teaching and the students fed back that they enjoyed my classes, that I was a good teacher. What for me was a temporary career stop-gap turned out to be an untapped passion.
So here we are in July 2020 as the end of my twenty-fifth year of teaching draws to a close under the extraordinary circumstances of COVID-19 lock-down and remote teaching. I bring you full circle back to the song I heard all those years ago. with a call to action.
Twenty-five years and my hope is still, trying to climb this great big hill to a new destination. So while you try in your institutions, share the thoughts in your head. Reflect on all we have achieved in the past few months and what needs to change. Let’s not pray for a revolution. Let’s be the evolution, the change-makers. Let’s change our institutions and re-imagine education.
Beadysea 